


Becoming Chapel - The first year

by IraBragi



Series: Building Home [9]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Gotham style medicine, Harley's hyenas, i don't know anything about medicine so don't take anything I say here as medical advice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 06:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12859221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IraBragi/pseuds/IraBragi





	Becoming Chapel - The first year

They say that the first year of anything is the hardest.  Now I’m not sure who “they” is, and I have no idea what criteria they used to make their judgment (I suspect they were thinking more about, like, learning a new language.  Not stabilizing broken bones and supervillain themed poisonings)  but I really, really, hope they are right because I’m not sure that I can survive a repeat of this one.  One thing’s for sure, I haven’t been borde.

It all started with Harley dumping a half-dead Batman on my living room floor.

 

The pounding was coming from the inside of my door.  That was what I noticed first as I stumbled, still mostly asleep, out of my bed and into the living room.  A woman was standing inside my apartment pounding on the _inside_ of my front door.  

“You gotta help him.  I didn’t mean to!”

The woman was wearing… clothes… that were more holes than not and had white makeup that covered most of her face.  
“Hurry up!  I’ve never seen him go down like that.  Come on!”

My brain had still not decided if this was  particularly vivid dream, or some sort of bizarre robbery attempt, when a grown from the floor distracted me.   It was Batman.

I hadn't really seen him in the uniform before.  I’d seen the _outfit_ in the batcave a few times, but I spent most of my time with Bruce Wayne not _him._   Even in the dim light I could see the blood.  

It had always seemed so hypothetical.  I could learn some first aid and maybe be useful someday.  It was interesting and it kept Damien from bugging me about taking up a mask.  Maybe I’d even had some daydreams about saving the day… but those were daydreams.  This was a masked vigilante bleeding on my floor and, unless I was very much mistaken, Harley Quinn in my house.  He groaned again.  I switched on the light.

“Harley, there is a first aid kit in the kitchen over the refrigerator.  Get it.”

Bruce’s mask was still on but his cape was in shreds and  there was a lot of glass shards of glass sticking out of his armor.  ABC, that was the acronym for first aid, right?  Airway, breathing... something.  What did I need to do first?

Harley came back with the kit.  He was breathing on his own, it sounded kinda rattle-y and bad, but it was air.  I felt for a pulse, then wondered what I was thinking, he was obviously still alive.  I checked anyway.  I couldn’t be sure but it seemed too fast, so I pressed my fingers against his chest. Even through the kevlar his heart was beating a million miles an hour.  Then I noticed the knife.

It was sticking out of the back of his shoulder.  It didn’t look to be too deep in, but it was wedged in the kevlar.

“Help me roll him over.”  It took the both of us to roll him onto his stomach, I have no idea how she got him up the stairs.  All this time Bruce was quiet except for a few low noises of pain.  That, more than anything else, was scaring me.  The knife needed to come out, but after I took it out I needed to be able to bandage up the wound, and to do that I needed his armor off.  Just as I was trying to decide if medical scissors would cut through bat armor Bruce jerked like he had been electrocuted and stopped breathing.  Fuck, fuck, fuck!

The epipen had adrenaline in it right?  That was good for getting someone un-dead?  Then something else occurred to me.

“Did you poison him?”

The look of honest horror on her face told me the answer before she said it, “No, I swear!  I threw the knife at him but Bats always dodges!  Always.  I didn’t poison him!”

It had to be poison.  I grabbed the epipen.  Something else occurred to me,

“Is there any chance this is fear toxin?”  Fear toxin works on adrenaline, if that was what it was, the epipen might kill him.

“I don’t know!  There shouldn't be anything!  No.  Yes?  No! No, no, no…”

She was muttering and looked ready to pass out herself.  Screw it, he was dead either way at this point.  I stabbed the needle into the nearest piece of exposed skin I could find, which happened to be his neck.  In movies there is always a dramatic pause to build tension while we wait to see if the hero lives or dies - in real life it feels ten times longer.            

He didn’t gasp dramatically or sit up screaming, but there was a sudden rush of air and his eyes snapped open before fluttering back shut.  Ok, one problem solved.

It took some doing but I managed to cut away enough of the black material that I was pretty sure I could put pressure and a bandage on the cut once the knife was out.  

“Harley can you get a towel from the bathroom?”  She scampered off and I placed the largest roll of gauze on the floor beside me.  When Harley came back with all the towels from my bathroom, plus a pillowcase that I’m not even sure is mine, I took a deep breath and gripped the knife as close to the skin as I could.

There was more blood.  I don’t know why I was surprised but I was.  The knife made a stomach turning scratching noise as it slid along his shoulder blade.  Then it popped free and I was pressing a towel against the wound as hard as I could and praying and cursing at the same time.  It really wasn’t a lot of blood; but at the time it felt like more blood than three people could possibly have in them all together.  When the first towel started to soak through I added another.  It stayed white.  I started to breath again.

The knife was simple, black on one side and white on the other with a weird inlay on the black side near the handle.  It kinda looked like a coin.  Which gave me an idea.

“Where did you get the knife?”  It took her a minute to process the question.  I’d say that she was looking pale but under the makeup it was impossible to actually tell.

“They was a present.  He was flirting, but not flirting, flirting.  Just to make Ivy jealous…”

“Who Harley?”

“Two-face.  He, he, said something…”  She pulls out a second knife.  This one is black and white with the inlay on the white side.  An idea begins to form in my head.

“Harley I need you to tell me exactly what Two-face told you when he gave you these.”  It took some rabbit trails and redirection but eventually she got to the pertinent part:

“Then he was like, one if by land and two of by sea-again, and he see said it really funny… like…”  I tuned out.  One if by land, two if by sea and the word "again."  Like “see you again?”  If there was poison on one and an antidote on the other it would fit with with what I’d heard about Two-face.  Bruce was breathing, but he wasn’t waking up.  The cuts and bruises that I could see should not be keeping him unconscious like this.  Fuck, I was really going to do this.

“Harley give me the other knife.”

I make a shallow cut on the palm of his hand and run the flat of the knife over it.  I check the towel, it’s still not soaked.  Is it my imagination, or does his breathing sound better?  Alright, it’s time to call in the big guns.

“Harley, can you find one of the robins and bring them here?  Tell them to bring a car, we need to get him home.”  She nods.

“And not Red Robin!  His driving is more liable to kill him than the stab wound!”  She smiles and runs to the window; a flip and a jump later she’s gone.  I wonder faintly what was wrong with the door.

It doesn't take Nightwing long to show up, he had been tracking Batman’s gps when he ran into Harley.  The two were halfway to a shouting match when they tumbled through the front door - and stopped short.  The problem with un-poisoning someone as hardheaded as Batman is that, the second they are even marginally conscious, they try to get up.  That is where the sitting on their back while trying to hold the towel against their still-bleeding shoulder and shouting at them to “sit the hell back down” part comes in.         

“He’s been poisoned.”  I give up on trying to bandage it any better and hold up the knives, both wrapped in the pillow case.  “Two-face’s work.  One is poison, the other seems to be an antidote.  He’s got a hole in his shoulder that someone who knows what they are doing should probably look at.”

Thankfully Nightwing is good at taking over ridiculous situations (being the oldest brother to his siblings will teach you that, I imagine.)  We get Bruce into the batmobile and convince Harley that she doesn't need to follow.  Which leaves me and the woman in a ratted up clown costume standing in front of my apartment building at three am.  God only knows what my neighbors must think.  I look over at her, she is shifting from foot to foot and biting her lip.  Screw it, I’m not getting any sleep tonight anyway.

“Hey, Harley, do you want something to drink?”

It turns out that her idea of a drink is some sort of suspicious green liquid from a flask on her belt that smells like it’s at least 100 proof.  Mine is herbal tea.  We compromise and put the alcohol in the tea.

“So how ex’ctly did ‘u end up here ‘nyway?”  When did getting drunk with a villain start to seem like a reasonable life choice?

“Batsy fell out of the window (“Wait what!?”) don’t worry, it wasn’t high.  Just like two stories up… anyway he fell and he just wouldn't get back up, and bats _always_ gets back up…”

Why didn’t she seem drunk at all?  Had she poisoned me?  Why was everything spinning?

“...and he kept saying something, but like hard to understand…”  Seriously, everything was spinning.

“...Chapel street.  So I took him there, and there was here, and I guess you’re Chapel street.  What is your name anyway?”

I had a vague feeling that this was a question that I would be much more concerned about if I were sober.  Instead what came out of me mouth was, “I’m not s’posed to tell you. ‘Secret.”

She nods like that makes perfect sense.  You’re Chapel then.  Cause you stitch people up and you’re nice.  She hands her cup back to me and I refill it with tea.  She adds the booze.  We drink until both the tea and the green stuff are gone.  The next morning I have a monster headache and two packages in front of my door.  One is a huge new medical kit with no note and the other is a bottle of thick blue liquid and a note that reads, “For Chapel, to help with the headache. - H.”  I chugged the entire thing in the doorway.

 

And that was the beginning.  Things I learned that year, in no particular order:

 

My first instinct when finding a hyena in my kitchen is to tell it to “SIT!” as firmly as I can manage.  My second is to throw a book at it.  The hyena will be less than impressed with both reactions.  Harley will be convinced that her precious baby loves you and no, that isn’t a growl, if she wanted to eat you she would have done it already!

Once the bat boys figure out that you will patch them up with minimal ribbing they will start coming to you for all kinds of ailments.  

When Tim claims that have cut most of his little toe off “climbing a tree” don’t bother to call him on the lie, the truth is far, far stranger.  

When Damien dislocates his shoulder twice in one week and you rat him out to Alfred he won’t actually kill you.  He might bobby trap your bathroom.  Snakes are really good at dogging knick-knacks and shovels, bullets not so much.  Boyfriends who always have at least one type of weaponry on them at all times are useful in this case.

Harley will get it in her head that you are a doctor, vet, mechanic, and tea house all rolled into one.  Treat the humans and animals but insist that she take the stolen robot mech to Batman.  It’s not worth the headache.

When Batman brings you a kid, a boy with big eyes and a broken arm, you give him ice cream after you set his arm.  Call child protective services and lie about why Batman would have dropped him off with you.  In six months you will know the third shift  CPS caseworker by name.  Both of you will politely ignore the question of where you keep finding all these children.  Never forget to give them a colorful bandaid before they leave.  It’s a little bit easier to be brave when you have a superman bandaid on your finger.

You are much smarter than you ever gave yourself credit for.  The medical books that you look up on Amazon that then magically (cough, Bruce, cough) find their way to your doorstep are hard to understand.  You will figure them out anyway.  One day you will look up from stitching up a gash on Jason's arm and realize that you don't even have to think, you just know what to do.

Related note, when you are at work and a door malfunctions dislocating two of your fingers, popping them back into place without a word is not a normal human response.  Damien is rubbing off on you.

When a non-too-bright henchman manages to piss off both the Bats and Penguin, and Harley dumps him on your sofa with a nasty case of lead poisoning, you tell both sides that they can fight over him after you get the bullet out.  If that fails you shove Harley’s baseball bat under Penguin’s chin.  Somehow you don’t end up dead.

When your kinda-maybe-we-haven’t-really- talked-about-it-but-we-both-know-we-have-like-feelings-feelings boyfriend gets it in his head that there is a plot to end the world disappears for a month without a word to anybody, then calls you choking up blood from an alley three blocks away, you won’t cry.  You will curse him out while you are trying to push his guts back into his body, and curse while you are pulling off his mask, and curse when you are telling the EMT’s that like hell are you riding to the hospital separately.  You will make up a story about finding him, and call Bruce, and wear a hole in the carpet while all of you wait for the surgery to be finished.  It crosses your mind that maybe the bats will hate you for calling 911, for not just fixing it, for letting Jayson leave to begin with.  But Dick will smother you in a bear hug, and Bruce will nod and quietly and tell you that, “no one can stop him when he gets an idea in his head, I'm glad he has someone he trusts enough to call.”

It won’t be until the surgeon comes out to talk to you and mentions that, “whoever put the tourniquet on his leg probably saved his life” that suddenly your eyes fill with tears and you go hide in a supply closet until you stop shaking.  When you go back and see Jay, too quiet and too pale, but already trying to pull out the IV a dam will break open and you will start screaming at him.  

How dare he think that he could just leave?  Who gave him permission to go bleed out in some random dumpster, and what made him think he could call you and then try his best to die in your arms?  When you tire yourself out and actually look at him - the look on his face, it’s not angry or sad like you expected, just this awful resignation.

“I’ll get my stuff from your place when they let me out of here.”

So you fall into the chair beside his bed and you grab his hand so hard you are afraid you will break more bones.

“Hell no.  You leave when I’m done yelling at you and at this rate it’s not going to be for another eighty years.”  Your voice is still rough but the look on his face is something beautiful.

Oh crap, I love him.  That's the thought bounces around in your head until the nurse shows you out. It keeps echoing as you spend the rest of the night in the hospital waiting room.  Grayson keeps trying to hug you.  Tim brings you espresso.  On the whole you prefer the coffey.

 

All years have to come to an end, even ones as full of blood and mayhem as this one.  One day your phone will ring (the kill bill siren that means it’s one of the bats calling) and you will snap, “Chapel here, what do you need?” and you realize that you have gotten used to this.  It’s not punching crime for justice and it’s not wearing a mask, but you are doing something.  Something important, maybe even something good.  And honestly, as years go, this wasn't your worst.


End file.
